


Magic Spring

by chiiyo86



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutual Non-Con, POV First Person, Sex Pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-04-23 02:23:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19141660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiiyo86/pseuds/chiiyo86
Summary: In the demigod world, when something looks too enticing it generally spells trouble. Percy and Nico really should have known better.





	Magic Spring

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cerberusia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cerberusia/gifts).



> Hope you enjoy this treat!

You know that saying about something being ‘too good to be true’? There’s a variation of it that goes around in demigod circles: ‘If something looks too pretty, too shiny, and just happens to show up when you need it the most, then it’s most certainly some kind of magic that’s here to screw with you.’ I knew that; Nico probably knew it too. I don’t have much to say in our defense, except that no one is safe from behaving like a total idiot from time to time. 

But let me give you some elements of context for what happened. It took place on a hot weekend of September—emphasis on _hot_ , the kind of sweltering, ‘I-want-to-die-my-soul-is-ready’ heat that is particularly unbearable in the city. Summer at Camp Half-Blood had ended about a month ago and it had left me feeling really low. I had turned eighteen in August and kind of felt like it was the end of an era. Chiron had assured me that I was still welcome at camp, that I could even start teaching the younger demigods some sword fighting, as Luke had done when I first met him. I knew all this, but it didn’t help me much with my mood, because I had another reason for not feeling too hot.

I’d just graduated from high school—which was honestly something of an accomplishment, given my track record with school—and for the past year my plan for what would come next had been clear in my mind: after high school, I would attend New Rome University with my girlfriend Annabeth Chase. Except that Annabeth and I had broken up a couple of months ago, for reasons that I don’t feel like getting into, and I was only now realizing how much of my desire for college had been bound to Annabeth. Now that we weren’t together anymore, I didn’t really know what I wanted. School would start in a couple of weeks and I’d been hiding my head in the sand, trying not to think about it. 

I don’t mean to make anyone feel sorry for me, but merely to explain why Nico di Angelo crashing into my room via shadow-travel came as a welcome distraction. He was wounded and out of ambrosia, and somehow his first instinct had been to come to me. Well, he told me that Hazel had been too far for him to reach her, but I have to admit that I was still pleased at the show of trust. Nico and I had such a turbulent history with each other that even being second on his list of ‘people to shadow-travel to when in need’ felt pretty good. Last summer, after I’d gotten out of Tartarus—I know, I lead an exciting life—and before Nico left with Reyna and the _Athena Parthenos_ , we’d had a mystifying conversation that had given me the feeling that he was mad at me for something. When we’d met again after Gaia had been defeated, though, he’d acted much friendlier—or at least friendly by Nico’s standards. We’d seen each other a few times since then and our interactions had been cordial on the whole. I had the distinct impression that Nico was making an effort to be nice, but it meant that he cared at least a little bit about the state of his relationship with me. As long as he was still willing to talk to me, then I had high hopes that I could charm him into being my friend. I’ve been told that I’m a charming guy. 

I kept ambrosia in my room, a hard-wired habit, so Nico was back on his feet in no time. He explained to me that his father had tasked him with capturing some hellhounds that had escaped the Underworld. Nico had gotten all of them except for one, who’d injured him and run away. Since I was bored and in a bad mood, I quite naturally offered Nico to help. Nothing like fighting a hellhound to get you out of your funk, I say. I was surprised that he accepted without protesting, although I noticed him tense up for a brief moment before he said yes. Maybe the fact that he’d already gotten hurt fighting that hellhound had forced some caution into him. 

We spent most of the day tracking down the beast. Or, to be perfectly truthful, it was Nico who did the tracking through some sort of Underworld tingly sense that he had. I just followed him around and jumped into the shadows with him. If you’ve never tried shadow-travel, then I really recommend it—unless you have a heart disease or are a pregnant woman. Or if you suffer from vertigo, or are afraid of the dark, of going too fast or of strange noises. I personally found it great fun, but you should know that I’m a bit of an adrenaline junkie. 

We eventually ended up on the side of a mountain beaten down by the sun. I wasn’t sure where we were exactly, except that I could tell it was about a hundred miles away from the Pacific Ocean. Nico was positive that the hellhound was somewhere around here, so we started looking for it on foot. The sun had chased most of the shadows and it made shadow-traveling a bit hazardous for Nico—fortunately, it meant that it was also a problem for the hellhound. 

It was a hot day, as I’ve already mentioned, and we walked up a narrow path that snaked around rocks for about an hour. As I said, there was very little shade to protect us from the pounding sun and I was drowning in my own sweat. If I was getting tired, then Nico was faring even worse. All that shadow-travel had tired him out and he was lagging behind, his head drooping more and more until I couldn’t see his face when I turned around to look at him, but only the top of his dark hair. 

“You doing okay, Nico?” I asked a few times.

“Fine,” he invariably replied. 

I hadn’t thought that we would be hiking up a mountain, so I didn’t have anything to drink on me, and neither did Nico. So when I sensed that there was water nearby, it was instinct to head for it. Nico tripped over a rock in the path at the same moment and I caught him by the arm to save him from a nose-dive. 

“You need to take a break and drink something,” I said.

“I don’t, I’m fine,” Nico said, trying weakly to tug his arm out of my grip. “I don’t need—”

“There’s water behind that rock over there,” I said, pointing at the rock in question. “Maybe you’re not thirsty, but _I_ am.”

At the mention of water, Nico’s resolve to pretend that he wasn’t worn out and dehydrated seemed to crumble. He let me lead him around the rock and ahoy! —behind it we found a pretty little spring. I’m biased, because I’m a fan of everything water-related for obvious reasons, but the spring honestly looked like a piece of Paradise. The water glistened under the sun as if it carried diamonds in it, chirping as it run down the mountain. About ten feet below us, the bed of the spring got larger and deeper between two rocks and water had pooled there, clear as crystal. I helped Nico get down to the water and he settled on one of the rocks, putting his sword next to him and then burying his face in his hands. 

“Drink, Nico,” I said.

He glared at me between his fingers. Sweat had stuck tendrils of his hair to his forehead and it looked like he had one of those elaborated twirly tattoos inked on his face. “In a moment, _Mom_ ,” he said acidly. 

I chuckled and bent down over the water, scooping some of it in my cupped hands. I should have been able to tell that something was wrong then, but Nico wasn’t the only one who badly needed some water, and my thirst was getting to that point where it becomes an obsession that is impossible to think past. I drank; the water tasted better than nectar, which is impressive given that nectar always tastes like your favorite drink. I nudged Nico in the side, and after another death glare he drank some of the spring water too. Then we just sort of lounged on the rock, sunbathing as though we were taking a day trip at the beach. You’re going to tell me, ‘hey, didn’t you have a hellhound to hunt down?’ Yes. Yes, we did. But after we drank from the spring it just… slipped from our minds. We were tired, and probably a little punch-drunk from the sun, but this isn’t why we ignored the very reason we’d come to that mountain in the first place. Something was wrong, but I didn’t realize it until later on—until it was too late to do anything about it. 

I’d been tired, but I was quickly able to shrug off my weariness like a coat and instead I was wired, ready to take on anything. Somehow, I still wasn’t thinking about our hellhound mission and I just put my newfound energy down to the water. That’s the effect water tends to have on me, even when it’s not… whatever we’d just drunk. I was used to feeling good from water, so I didn’t think anything of it. Not at first. I did notice that Nico was recovering quickly too and it struck me as strange. I’d thought for sure that he would need a nap before we could go on, but he was looking more alert by the minute. He sat with his legs sprawled in front of him, leaning on his hands and looking at the spring gaily running in front of us. 

Very soon, I started to feel not just reenergized but also weirdly antsy. I was getting hot, and it wasn’t from the sun. It felt like it was coming from inside me, like a fire had been lit up at the pit of my stomach and was slowly warming its way to the rest of my body, down to my toes and up to my face and the tip of my fingers. I wasn’t overly worried about it, though. My mind felt both too slow and too fast—my attention was drawn to a myriad of details at once, but it was hard to think clearly and draw any conclusion from what I was experiencing. And when I say that I was paying attention to a lot of details, well, that’s not exactly true—I was focused on one thing, and it was Nico. I was just noticing a lot of things about him all of a sudden. I was noticing that his hair, where it wasn’t matted with sweat, looked like it would be really soft to the touch. I noticed that he had a few very faint freckles on his nose, like Bianca had, but less obvious. I noticed that his shoulders were larger than the last time I’d seen him, that the muscles on his arms were better defined, even though he was still very thin. I noticed that his face was sharper, that he’d gotten taller and that his hands were bigger. The skull ring he wore on his finger gleamed from the sun and I spent maybe a minute stupidly fascinated by it, as well as by the shape of his fingers, of his knuckles, of his fingernails. I looked up and my eyes caught the line of his throat, exposed by the fact that he’d thrown back his head. I saw the way his cheeks had flushed, two red spots on his pale skin.

My heart fluttered like a trapped bird in my chest and my mouth was dry as bone despite the water I’d drunk. My face tingled and I thought that I must be pretty flushed myself. I shook my head, trying to wrestle my thoughts into order. I smacked my lips and then licked them for some moisture.

“I, uh,” I said. “I feel kind of—”

The sound of my voice made Nico turn toward me. His eyes were wide; his lips were slightly parted and he was breathing heavily. “Percy,” he said in a pleading voice that got me straight in the heart and, uh, some place else. “I feel strange. Something is, something’s wrong.”

He tugged at the collar of his shirt, exposing more of his collarbone. With a lack of coordination that wasn’t like him at all he gathered his legs under him and got up to his knees, extending a hand at me like a call for help. I went to him on my hands and knees, and I swear to the gods, at that moment my only thought was that he looked in pain and that I needed to help him. I hadn’t caught up yet to the fact that there was something wrong with both of us and that it was related to sex. ‘Nico’ and ‘sex’ were two things that had never fit together in my mind. 

I reached him, and I honestly don’t know what I thought I should do to help him but as soon as I was close enough, Nico threw his arms around my neck and smashed our mouths together. I should have been stunned, confused, but when our lips touched, the heat that I’d been feeling exploded inside me and I became a black hole of all-consuming need that left no room for thought. I _needed_ more of Nico—his lips, the way his mouth tasted when he opened it to me, the sensation of his smooth, cool skin under my hands after I’d slipped them under his t-shirt, all of it sparked in me an intense desire to get more, to get all of him and beyond that. I don’t know what we looked like to an outside observer, but I think it must have been something like two newborn puppies wrestling in a chaotic mess of limbs. Our noses crashed, our hands bumped into each other as they flailed around, both of us uncontrolled and frantic, incapable of deciding on a clear direction. Our kiss was getting wet and messy, our lips slick with spit and our tongues tangling sloppily. I elbowed Nico in the side and he kneed me in the stomach, but eventually we managed to reach each other’s belts and drag down each other’s pants. By that point, we were both very hard. Nico wore dark blue boxer shorts and I could see a darker spot spreading on the fabric, where the tip of his dick strained against it. I was in a similar state, so aroused that it bordered on painful, and my dick was begging me to do something about it. I crawled between Nico’s legs, trying to kick my jeans off my left foot, still kissing him at the same time. Clamping his hips between my thighs, I rubbed my clothed hard dick against his and shuddered with something that was still too pained to be relief. 

I felt Nick’s dick twitch under me. He groaned, stopped kissing me to hide his face against my neck, and that felt like the fucking sweetest thing. I felt something wet on my skin, his _tongue_ , then the scrape of his teeth, and I moaned louder than I think I’ve done before during sex. Everything felt keener, more intense than it ever had. My skin was like a field of raw nerves and every point of contact with Nico burned. I wanted to get my hand inside his underwear, hold his naked dick in my hand, but it would have meant pulling away first and I was physically incapable of doing that. Nico sucked on the skin of my neck and I buried my face in his soft, soft hair, rocking my hips and biting my lips not to scream. I was getting close and started rubbing against him faster, eager for some release. Nico whimpered and it vibrated against my skin. He pressed his nose in the crook of my neck, a spot of coolness on my feverish skin. 

“Percy,” he said, his voice high-pitched and desperate. “Percy, I love you, _I love you_.”

My orgasm struck me right then. I came harder than I ever had, and for a moment I was blind and deaf to anything but that mad, scorching pleasure that rippled through me. When I came back to myself, my face was still pressed against Nico’s head. Some of his hair had found its way in my mouth and I had to spit it out. Nico was shaking violently in my arms, until he gave me a hard shove, enough that I lost my balance and landed on my elbow.

“Ow!”

I sat up and rubbed my elbow, which had gone numb from the awkward landing. Nico had pulled his limbs back to himself and scrambled away from me. He was disheveled, probably from me rubbing my face in his hair—the thought made be blush hard and I turned away. I didn’t think I could ever look Nico in the eye again, so instead I looked at the spring, still sparkling enticingly. It was pretty gross inside my underwear, as you can imagine, but it was now obvious that the water had done something to us, so washing up would need to wait. I just clumsily put my jeans back on, before going back to the pool to examine it. Squinting at the water, I saw that something was written at the bottom on a flat slate of stone. The moving water mangled the letters, which made reading even harder than it was on a good day, so it took me a minute or two to decipher the few words. _Ha ha. Gotcha —Himeros._

“Himeros,” I murmured out loud.

“One of the Erotes,” Nico said in a hollow voice. “Eros’ twin brother. God of sexual desire and of—of unrequited love.”

_Percy, I love you._

Of course, Nico had said that under the influence of whatever curse we’d gotten from that spring water. But even if the last few minutes felt like a fever dream now, I remembered vividly that I hadn’t had any space left in my brain for mushy declarations of love. The way I’d, um, wanted Nico had been pure urgent physical need. Nico, on the other hand, had said, ‘ _I love you._ ’ I’d thought that he had a crush on Annabeth and so had Annabeth herself. It looked like we’d gotten it backward, and I was hit by that feeling you get when you realize that you’ve been trying to fit a puzzle piece in the wrong spot all along. I had now found the right spot and the puzzle was complete. I couldn’t believe how dense I’d been.

I risked a glance at Nico. His face was pressed against his knees and he held fistfuls of his hair in his hands, pulling at it. I wanted to say something, because he was obviously feeling awful and in a way I’d had a part in it, so, I don’t know, I felt kind of bad about it. What could I say that wouldn’t make him feel worse, though?

“Nico, I—”

I was saved from the awkwardness of trying to finish that sentence by a massive shadow that momentarily covered the sun and then jumped at us in the form of an enraged hellhound. Riptide was in my hand in no time, Nico had jumped on his feet just as quickly and grabbed his sword. For the next few instants, we were too busy to think about what had happened between us. It was a magnificent fight, if I do say so myself. We hadn’t had the opportunity to team up very often, but we worked well together and it felt right to be fighting side by side. I lashed water from the spring at the hellhound and Nico was relentless with his soul-sucking black sword. He was quick, I was nimble. I managed to clamber up the beast’s large back while Nico distracted it, and I plunged my sword into the thick meat of its neck. I didn’t kill it, because Nico had said that the mission was to bring it back alive, but I wounded it badly enough that it stumbled, weakened by the pain and blood loss. It gave Nico enough time to drag thin pieces of shadows from under and in-between rocks. The shadows slithered over the stone up to Nico, who grabbed them as if they were solid bands of fabric and wove them into a dark, flimsy net. I jumped off the hellhound and Nico threw his net over it, trapping the beast, who howled and started thrashing against it. Nico pulled at the net and the hellhound’s large form contracted into a ball of darkness, then a pinprick, before it disappeared completely. 

“Wow,” I said, wiping sweat off my eyes. Adrenaline was still pulsing through me. “That was awesome.”

Nico fell down to his knees. I ran to him to see if he was okay, but when I put my hand on his shoulder he slapped it away. “Don’t touch me!” he yelled.

I stepped away, feeling stung. Okay, I understood that it probably sucked very hard for him right now. He’d confessed to me, but not of his own free will. He’d taken a lot of pains to hide his feelings, so I guessed he wasn’t thrilled that it was out in the open, especially like that. I felt for him, I did. But it wasn’t a walk in the park for me either. We’d had sex—not the kind of sex I was used to, but it couldn’t be described as anything but sexual. Just thinking about it made my stomach feel tingly. I’d never had sex with a guy before, hadn’t even thought about it, but this had been the most intense sexual experience I’d had in my life and I owed it to divine magic from a mischievous god of lust. So I was feeling pretty rattled and it hurt that Nico was behaving as if I was the bad guy. 

“Just wanted to see if you were okay,” I muttered.

He got back on his feet but kept his head down. “I’m fine,” he said, managing to sound both weary and acerbic. 

“Look, we should—”

“Don’t,” he said, cutting me off. “Don’t say anything. I don’t need to hear it.”

My cheeks were getting warm again, this time from growing irritation. “You don’t even know what I was going to say!”

“I think I can guess it pretty well.”

“Oh, you do? Are you a mind-reader, now? Look at me.” I walked into his personal space and watched him flinch away, feeling sick and angry and ashamed. “For the gods’ sake, _look_ at me, Nico!”

He took a step back and I thought he might try to shadow-travel, even though he was obviously not in a state to do it safely. With no input from my brain, my hand shot out and grabbed his wrist. 

“Let go of me,” Nico said between clenched teeth, still angled away from me. His pulse was racing under my fingers.

“Listen, I had no idea that—”

“Well, now you know. I don’t want to talk about it. I just want you to leave me alone. This is—”

“Stop being so—” I ground my teeth in frustration, so hard that my jaw ached. “This has happened to me too, you know! It’s not just about you.”

Nico turned to face me, looking stricken. Our eyes hadn’t really met since we’d furiously gotten off with each other, and his were shining with unshed tears. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, his bottom lip quivering. “I didn’t want—not like this—I would never—”

I couldn’t stay mad at him when he looked so upset, and my anger deflated. Bianca had wanted me to look out for him after her death, and even though a lot had happened since then and Nico was capable of taking care of himself, I’d never completely lost that protective instinct. 

“It’s not your fault,” I said with a sigh. “But you’re acting like I attacked you or something, and it doesn’t feel great. I don’t want you to hate me.”

Nico’s head dropped, his eyes disappearing again behind a veil of his black hair. He lifted the hand that I wasn’t holding and wiped them with it. “I think we’ve established that I don’t exactly hate you,” he said with a sniff.

“Could have fooled me,” I said, but it was without heat. My tiredness from before had doubled down on me and my head hurt. 

We stood there for another long moment, neither of us knowing what else to say. I was still holding Nico’s wrist and he wasn’t trying to free himself from my hold anymore. He was staring at his feet, chewing his lip. I couldn’t look at his mouth without remembering kissing him hungrily. New heat rushed through me at the memory and it suddenly became supremely awkward to keep holding his wrist, so I dropped it. Nico looked up and glanced at me warily.

“What?” he said.

My heart was beating hard again. I didn’t know if it was the memories of what had happened or Nico himself that unnerved me. It would be an understatement to say that I was confused. I was fairly sure I was straight; like, 98% sure. I had been attracted to Annabeth, had loved her—I was certain of that, even if it was over between us. The spring water had screwed with my body and was still screwing with my mind. It was unfair to Nico to feel all flustered about it, because for him it had been way more real than it had been for me. I have no excuse for what I did next.

“Nico.”

“What is it?”

I moved closer and kissed him on the lips. This wasn’t at all like the frantic, messy kiss we’d shared earlier. I didn’t use tongue or anything. It was a soft press of lips, just for a second and then I pulled back. I slowly released the breath I’d been holding during the kiss, feeling a little dizzy.

“Are you making fun of me?” Nico asked, a deadly edge to his voice.

I don’t know if you’ve ever been glared at by a child of Hades, but I can tell you that it makes you reconsider your life choices. Nico’s eyes had become hard and cold, like polished onyx stones, and I could swear that the temperature had dropped by a good few degrees. 

“No!” I exclaimed, waving my hands in denial. “No, I swear. I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have done that.” My heart hadn’t calmed down yet and I didn’t know how to interpret it. The only thing I was sure of was that I didn’t want to ruin things with Nico even further. “Please, I just—I’m tired. It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah.” Nico’s shoulders sagged. He closed his eyes and dragged his hands down his face. “Do _you_ hate me?” he asked, his voice small and muffled behind his hands.

“No, of course not.” I wanted to pat his shoulder or something, but touching him right now felt… I don’t know, dangerous in some way. “You’re frustrating, but I don’t think I could ever hate you, and certainly not because of that. We’re cool, I promise.”

“Okay.” Nico let his hands fall to his sides and gave me a strained half-smile. “I need to take a short nap, but I’d rather do it away from that spring. Then we can walk down the mountain a little until we find better shadows than here, and I’ll take you back home.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

I ended up taking a nap too, because I was worn out, and then Nico brought me back home without us talking much, about what had happened or anything else. Once I was home I probably should have reflected on the day’s valuable lessons, like ‘water can be hurtful even when you’re the son of the sea god’ or ‘people are surprising and you never really know what’s in somebody else’s mind’ or ‘you think you know yourself but you never completely do.’ I could have thought long and hard about all the things I didn’t want to think about, all the decisions I’d postponed, all the uncomfortable questions I didn’t dare ask. Instead I crashed on my bed and slept six more hours. Soul-searching could wait until tomorrow.


End file.
